Citizenship, Political Engagement, and Belonging: Immigrants in Europe and the United States

Afterword: Some Concluding Reflections

244 Afterword Some Concluding Reflections Nancy Foner The chapters in this volume offer important insights and rich data that push forward our understanding of citizenship and civic and political participation among immigrants in the United States and Western Europe. These topics are of growing interest in the immigration field and anthropologists have much to contribute to them. In this afterword, I offer reflections on several themes that come out in the chapters, including the benefits of an ethnographic approach and the effects of transnational ties on civic and political engagement. I also consider some questions that arise in beginning to think more systematically about a theme or approach that is implicit in the organization of the book: cross-national comparisons. Ethnographic Approach and Transnational Ties One contribution of the volume is its ethnographic approach. In general , ethnographic research is able to provide up-close, in-depth knowledge of the day-to-day lives of individuals and bring people—their perspectives, social relations, and problems—to life (Foner 2003a). Because ethnographers study on-the-ground social relations, they can shed light on the complex ways that migrants, in their everyday lives, are affected by and, at the same time, respond to, and sometimes seek to influence or change, state policies. This goes beyond policies concerning naturalization and legal citizenship, as many of the chapters make clear. Most migrants, after all, are not legal citizens of the countries where they live; yet as social citizens , as Glick Schiller and Caglar emphasize, they participate in, and may claim rights in, the social, economic, and political life of the state. Through participant observation, ethnographers are well positioned to illuminate Afterword 245 migrants’ perceptions, ideas, and values—and their sense of belonging or exclusion—as these both reflect and affect their relation to political, legal, economic, and social institutions and policies in the receiving society. In analyzing immigrant civic and political participation, ethnographic research can reveal, as Garapich argues, dynamics within ethnic groups that are relevant to group mobilization, including which group members decide to participate in public life and why, which individuals assume leadership roles, and why members of a group choose particular discourses—for example , ethnic or class-based—in claims making. Given that ethnographic research typically extends over a considerable time period and involves long-term contact with individuals, it is able to show, as Peró notes in his discussion of Latin Americans in London, how patterns of mobilization within a group change over time—even in the context of a single and stable institutional environment. In a similar vein, Brettell’s analysis brings out how political strategies were developed and altered among online immigrant “netizens” in the course of her two-year, participant-observer study. Given anthropologists’ sensitivity to the links that migrants maintain with their countries of origin, it is not surprising that many chapters discuss transnational ties as they relate to civic and political engagement in the “host” as well as “home” society. The argument that transnational practices and political incorporation in the new society go hand in hand receives support in the volume, most notably in the essays by Richman and Wong and the editors’ introduction. The “high-tech” Chinese immigrants in Silicon Valley who travel back and forth between California and China, according to Wong, are eager to become U.S. citizens and use transnational networks and opportunities to ground themselves in and establish roots in the United States. To be sure, transnational ties sometimes slow the acquisition of new loyalties and identities in the new society. However, a growing body of research on immigrants in the United States indicates that this is generally not the case. Rather than detracting from involvements in the United States, engagement in home-country-based politics and organizations can actually accelerate the process of political integration. A number of studies show that transnational political participation strengthens migrants’ ability to mobilize a base of support for political issues and elections in the United States and reinforces or encourages an interest in U.S. politics (see Foner 2007a). The skills learned in one context frequently travel well to others—so that the experience gained in founding hometown committees or participating in other kinds of transnational political activities can be transferred and usefully applied to campaigns to advance migrants’ interests in U.S. cities and towns (Guarnizo, Sanchez, and Roach 1999; Portes and Rumbaut 2006: 138–39). Immigrants...